The Making of the Riddle
by asleet
Summary: Tom Riddle's youth at Hogwarts and what made him become Voldemort. Of his grandfather who facilitated his change and of the one beautiful girl who almost saved him from himself.
1. one

_This is the first installment in the stories of Tom Riddle at school—from the Harry Potter series written by J.K Rowling. _

**One**

It was chilly when Tom woke up. Not cold—not so much that it made him curl up tighter in the sheets and make his breath come in ragged gasps—no, it wasn't cold. He knew cold from the orphanage, but this wasn't it. Nor was it cool. It wasn't a light breeze playing on his skin, dancing between his mind and his body, tickling his senses and making his hairs stand on end. It didn't mean warm spring days and a yellow sun strung up way high in the sky. Those were too good of days to see him any longer.

It was chilly. But Tom welcomed it. It meant that the air outside was cold—freezing perhaps, but inside...inside, there was enough comfort provided so that it was merely chilly. It didn't make him uncomfortable. No, on the contrary, the fact that someone obviously cared enough for him to put a wall between him and the cold—just that fact was enough for him to treasure the chilliness, the goosebumps suddenly welcome friends.

The others in the dormitory were still asleep. My schoolmates. He had never had schoolmates before. Well, they'd been forced at the orphanage to suffer through a few hours of schooling everyday, but the teachers were obviously so inadequate, so caught up in ignorance themselves that little of what they said had any scholarly relevance at all and he didn't even deign to call it "school." Tom knew they were kind people, but that just made them weak. It was the one thing he learned in the orphanage—the real rule.

The volunteer teachers had repeated the golden rule to them again and again. "Do to others what you wish them to do to you." They said the rule with a strained smile, with eyes glazed over. Tom thought they talked to them like that because they themselves knew the lies that sprouted from their mouths. No, Tom finally realized. That was not the golden rule. That was but a lie to comfort the consciousness of those people who've lived their entire lives. They never just survived, they lived. Well, for us here, for those of us who don't have our nice warm houses to go home to, who don't _have _a home, but are jammed into this god-forsaken building that provides them with the barest of necessities and teaches them the lies that they all want us to believe...for us, living is a dream. We survive; that's all. If you don't survive, then one becomes weak, and then one does not survive any longer. _That _is the golden rule. Survival of the strongest.

But here, within these thick castle walls, where the never-ending food was prepared by creatures who's only happiness was derived from serving them, where fire was not made, but conjured, where the teachers weren't there as volunteers, but paid in gold coins to do what they did. He was in Hogwarts. The name itself was magic, unbeknownst to those muggles out there. Those _people. _Tom spat the word out. It wasn't worthy of them. Of wizards and witches. The word they used was _muggle. _Yes, that is a word that indicates a separation of races. Wizards and witches were above those muggles as they were above the animals that roamed the forests. _Muggles _like his father put his mother to the blade of Old Man Grim, and the muggle father that crammed him into that orphanage, that made him suffer for all those long years while he ran, scampering back to his rich family. It was also his muggle father that gave him his name. That forced upon him the curse that slithered along in his footsteps, revealing itself everytime someone called out to him, so that even his identity was a reminder of the smudge in his past that just wouldn't go away, no matter how hard he tried to rid himself of it.

_Tom Riddle._

He could just scream from rage.

This name was not for him. It was for that bitch of a father. It was for someone _human. _For a muggle, but please, not for him. How could he function with that label? How could they expect him to walk, to breathe, to _live _with that monstrosity imbedded in his very skin?

No, a new name must be adopted.

But first, the nature of this one must be changed. It was already smeared with a cowardly character, one who left his wife and abandoned his child to idiots and savages. Now it would require an offbalancing effect. It needed one who could battle the _muggle _effects of the previous user.

Tom rolled off the soft feather bed, and straightened himself up. The chillyness was still there, but that was good. He wanted it. It kept him frozen.

He dressed quietly and descended the stone steps to the common room with just as little noise. It was still early in the morning, and light had barely lit up the grounds. He settled next to a window and gazed outside.

An early morning rain was starting to fall, coating the grasses in its cold droplets.

Another day starts.

_**Continued in Two.**_


	2. Two

_This is the second installment in the stories of Tom Riddle at school—from the Harry Potter series written by J.K Rowling._

**Two**

Food.

It was amazing what these others took for granted.

Just the fact that there was an endless amount of whatever you wanted to eat—well, that was a fantastic miracle in itself, but the wizards and witches that sat around them didn't seem all that amazed with the bounty and the feast that awaited them at every meal.

Tom speared a sausage with his knife and held it up to his nose. The scents that escaped from the still hissing meat was filled with spices, salt, and cooked fat. He breathed in through his nostril and closed his eyes. This was _food, _not that multi-colored slop they dollopped onto your plate along with a piece of crusty, hardened bread and watery soup. On the good days the soup had pieces of potatoes and minute beef tendons swimming around in the water and cabbage. On the bad days not all the worms would be washed out of the cabbage. Not all of them would be dead either.

He brought the sausage slowly to his mouth and delicately bit in for a small bite. He sat there quietly and just chewed, mixing saliva with the juicy pieces and tried to bring out its full flavor before swallowing and taking another bite in the same way.

"Charms first thing today – I tell you, I hate that class."

Tom turned to his right and watched his friend Andrew plop down next to him. Andrew was a well built youth of the same age as Tom, 12, and both had birthdays in October. He had short, spiky hair and a handsome face that was just starting to be disfigured by the early signs of acne.

"Groover does seem to enjoy watching you throw fits," Tom said, chuckling. "Gives her an excuse to throw you in detention for another few weeks."

"Honestly, that cow hates anyone not Ravenclaw," Andrew muttered, while spooning himself some porridge and taking a rough bite of bacon. "If I had my way, she'd be marching in the front lines of the German army right now. She'd fit right in with those repulsive muggles."

Tom smiled, but inside, his heart lit on fire, almost melting his icy exterior. The very mention of the word sparked an inferno inside him. He couldn't imagine what it'd be like to live amongst those heathens day after day, wallowing in their filth and ignorance. He grimaced in disgust.

But just then the owl post arrived, the noise distracting Tom from his dark thoughts of muggles.

Andrew looked up as a brown tawny owl dropped the daily prophet into his lap. In doing so, the owl accidentally knocked over Andrew's goblet and it spilled on his robes, causing him to curse loudly.

Tom gave the incoming owls a fleeting glance, then turned back to taking minute bites from his food. The rush of owls was still a worthy spectacle, but nothing more. Tom hadn't received anything since he'd arrived here, but then again, why should he? He had no family left besides some distant relatives that were probably mostly muggle anyway. He never wanted to check as to keep the hope alive that he actually had no more connections to the human world.

But to his great surprise, a purely white snow owl dropped down by him and left an envelope in his lap. The owl seemed to glare at him for a second, then lifted off in a flurry of white and was gone, leaving Tom stunned.

His clumsy fingers picked up the letter but before he could open it, his eyes read what was written in block print on the front of the envelope.

**DO NOT OPEN IN PUBLIC**

Tom stared at the writing a few moments before the understanding percolated through his brain. He shot a glance over at Andrew, but he was scrubbing furiously at the stain on his robes with a cloth and didn't seem to notice what had just happened. Tom stuffed the letter into his robes and uttered a broken sentence about visiting the lavatories. Andrew muttered something in return, and it may have been a reply or another curse.

One hand clutching the letter under his robe, Tom got up quickly and shot a furtive look around before hurrying out of the great hall. His curiosity was taking large bites into his mind. This was his first letter, and the first words on it were instructions telling him not to open it around anyone else. Half boiled thoughts were racing around his head, filling his brain with their crazed fumes. What could this be? From a professor? Or maybe some official government notification about sensitive information? He didn't have any sensitive information though, and a teacher? Why would they send him an owl? That was just stupid. They could talk to him any day...unless it was so secret they didn't want anyone seeing them together...but then...

This type of thinking was still going on when suddenly he bounced off of something. He blinked and realized that in his deep pondering, he had collided with a professor.

"Sleepwalking, Tom?"

The eyes of Professor Dumbledore gazed down at the boy before him behind half moon glasses and with a bemused expression on his face.

"S-Sorry, Professor," Tom stuttered. He hesitated, face burning with anger at his own stupidity and clumsiness. To collide with a professor, especially Professor Dumbledore, who had enough respect from the student body to rival that of the headmaster's was like stepping on the toes of the Minister of Magic. And this was not a time when he wanted any type of attention from anyone, especially a professor. "I was just—just not---not paying attention sir—I mean, Professor..." He turned slightly to hide the hand stuffed under his robes.

"It's perfectly all right, Tom," Dumbledore said, smiling a little. "Just be sure you're awake by my class."

"Yes, Professor," Tom muttered. He turned and started walking, this time, heads up.

But as he turned, Dumbledore caught sight of the hand turned crookedly under his robe, and opened his mouth to say something, but Tom hurried away pretending not to see, soon swallowed up by the crowd all settling down to their morning meal.

Tom exited the great hall and started down a corridor that led to the main entrance. No one would be exiting or entering this time of day, and it was closer than a bathroom or the Slytherin commons.

Nearing the great double doors, he pulled out the envelope that was by now crumpled and wet from his nervous sweat, and was starting to break the seal when he heard rapid footsteps. Tom instantly shoved the letter back under his robes and looked up with a startled expression.

A girl was just running into the main entrance hall, and she was dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants that had spots of wetness, courtesy of the early shower. Tom blinked. Muggle clothing. It seemed almost peculiar to him now, after seeing robes day in and day out. He paused as the girl slowed and stopped, panting. She caught sight of Tom and smiled at the strange look on his features.

"I got a habit of jogging every morning," she said cheerfully. She laughed in what seemed to be embarrassment. "Yeah, I know I'm wearing weird stuff. It's muggle clothing...my dad was a muggle..."

Tom winced at the word, but covered it up with a quick reply.

"Yeah, I know what they are..." he hesitated, unsure of whether or not to go on, but continued anyway. "My dad was a m-muggle too. I was raised by muggles, actually..."

The girl laughed, looking pleasantly surprised. She removed a headband she'd been wearing and her blonde hair tumbled down in shiny waves, water droplets momentarily suspended in air, looking more like crystals than liquid. Tom stared. She really was very pretty.

The girl noticed him staring, and narrowed her eyes. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

Tom paused. He almost blurted out "I would remember you," but stopped himself just in time.

"Yes," she said, a look of recognition dawning on her beautiful features. "You're in my charms class!"

Tom blinked. Was she? Honestly, he still couldn't name who was in what class. He knew the Slytherins and that's all that mattered. Everyone else was irrelevant unless they were in some way a threat.

"Yeah," he said with mock excitement. "Yeah, I remember you..."

She grinned. What cute dimples, Tom thought feverishly.

"So I'll see you there after breakfast. First thing today!"

And with that cheerful goodbye, the girl jogged off towards the great hall, still in her sweats. Tom was left staring at her receding figure, still without a name to put with the face.

He turned slowly towards the entrance, momentarily puzzled as to why he was there, but then he remembered his original purpose. The letter.

Tom drew it out slowly, and examined the envelope. It was thick paper, and part of his mind couldn't help but say, _so no one can guess what's inside. _He looked at the handwriting. The letters were written in a sharp, distinct sort of style, and just the way he—Tom couldn't link the writing with a woman in his mind—wrote implied a sort of solidness. The seal was nothing but dripped blood red wax—_anonymity. _

He turned the letter over one more time before slowly sliding a finger under the seal and tearing the mouth open in one smooth stroke. He shook it and a folded slip of paper fell out onto his waiting hand. He unfolded it, read, and instantly, all thoughts of the girl left his head.

**Tom**

**I was there at your birth. From a distance I watched you grow and was there when your father left. I couldn't hold onto your mother. I'm sorry for the last 11 years Tom, but I want to make you understand why I had to do it. We need to talk. Send an owl back with an undisturbed place where we can converse without a chance of intrusion. I can help you become who you want to be, and seek revenge on the one that wronged you.**

**Let no one know of this. Burn the letter and the envelope after you've read it. It's of utmost importance that you do.**

**Always,**

** Your Grandfather**

Tom stared at the closing in undiluted unbelief.

Always. Your Grandfather.

_**Continued in Three**_


End file.
